Highlights
- Five bedrooms, sleeps ten
- Two bedrooms on the ground floor
- Wide, shallow staircase with rails
- Courtyard that absorbs sound
- One long table for ten
Ground floor first
Two of the five bedrooms are on the ground floor, off the courtyard, which is the detail that decides whether a riad works for a family. Grandparents are not sent up two flights at midnight. A toddler who wakes is thirty seconds away rather than a staircase away. The remaining three are above, and every bedroom has its own bathroom, so ten people are not queuing at eight in the morning.
Stairs you can carry a child up
The staircase is unusually wide for a house of this age, with shallow treads and a solid rail on both sides. Two people pass on it without turning sideways. Suitcases go up without drama, and so does a sleeping five-year-old.
The courtyard takes the noise
Courtyards can behave like sound boxes, bouncing every voice off four hard walls. This one is planted along its edges, floored in old bejmat with rugs over it, and open the full height of the house, so noise goes upward and out. Children can be children in it while somebody reads on the gallery ten metres away. Furniture throughout is robust rather than delicate, and that is on purpose. A cook and a housekeeper usually come with a house run at this scale, and everyone tends to eat at the one long table.
Amenities
- Two ground-floor bedrooms
- Working kitchen, normally open to guests
- Courtyard dining table for ten
- Cots and high chairs usually available
- Air conditioning in all bedrooms
- Shaded roof terrace
Ideal for
Available on request
- Airport transfers with child seats
- Cook for family meals
- Babysitting arranged locally
- Half-day trips out of the city
- Car and driver
Charged separately from the stay and confirmed case by case.
Gallery
The area
For families the southern Medina is easier than the middle. Its lanes take a pushchair without anyone flattening themselves against a wall, and the shops along them sell the ordinary things — nappies, plasters, a pharmacy that stays open late — rather than lanterns for visitors. A few minutes out through the gate there is open ground and shade, which counts for something once children have run out of patience with alleys. The crowds keep to the north, and they stay there.
What the photos won't tell you
Every listing in the world photographs the pool from its best corner, and no photograph answers the questions that decide a stay. So before you commit, we put the following in writing for your dates:
- How far the car gets, and how many metres and steps remain with the luggage.
- Who the neighbours are, and what you will hear at five in the morning.
- Whether the pool is heated, and in which months that decides whether you swim.
- What “staffed” covers — who is there, at what hours, and who cooks.
- Where the wifi actually reaches, not just where the router is.
- Which of the property’s own photographs were taken with a wide-angle lens, and what a room looks like from the doorway.
Common questions
Is the riad safe for young children?
As safe as an old house can be made. The stairs have rails on both sides, the gallery above the courtyard is balustraded, and there is no pool to fence. Gates for the staircase and cots are usually arranged in advance if the ages are known.
Can we cook for ourselves?
Usually, yes — the kitchen is a working one and guests are normally welcome in it, which matters when children eat at six and adults at nine. Most groups still ask the cook to handle lunch and dinner and keep the kitchen for breakfast, snacks and bottles.
How are the five bedrooms usually configured?
Two doubles on the ground floor, two doubles and a twin above, each with its own bathroom — ten people without anyone on a sofa bed. The twin sits closest to the stairs, which suits older children, and the ground-floor pair are next door to each other.
Is it noisy from outside?
Rarely. The lane is residential, and the house turns its back on it: windows face inward, onto the courtyard. What does carry is the quarter waking early — shutters, a moped, bread going to the oven — and most people stop hearing it after a night or two.
Request this stay
Tell us your dates and how many of you there are. A person reads it and answers.